In 1982 we travel
to Groningen in Holland. We carry with us the memory of the Apartment
we first conceived in 1978. A joint point of departure, a joint memory.
During the evenings in a freezing basement gallery we reminisce to each
other about all the details of the apartment until we fall asleep. In
the mornings we note down our dreams and so allow an exhibition to grow
during a period of 14 day

In early 1993 we are
beginning to find it hard to distinguish between concepts: what is internal,
what is external? A series of dream visions occur that are related to
our joint work. The border between "I" and "the world"
dissolves. The knowledge that this border is merely a model and an image
of the inevitable limit we call death makes us aware of the necessity
of noting down our visions. Dream visions that from 1994 onwards take
the form of definite messages to various addressees around the world.
Letters in which we move freely in all times and all heads; at all levels
and in all conceivable and inconceivable space.

A story begins.
An outer surface under which layer after layer may be imagined. The red
threads of this story are attached to other stories, other times and space.
A sentence, a centre, in the writing of the letter a kind of condensation
suddenly appears as a goal, but turns out to be just a mirage: the beginning
of yet another story.
There is no given truth for the artist. Each work and every statement
is an expression of a hidden source of energy that the work tries in vain
to control through its form and content. Therefore the work must be a
process; an analysis that not only comprises the unconsciousness of the
analysed, but which also allows the unconscious desire of the analyst
to be expressed. As in a conversation in which the words have entered
an alliance with each other and the apparent is always the threshold to
something else.
Thus, letter is laid upon letter on the poetic map. One begins in a dream,
a memory, a refrain, or a word in a completely different letter. New names
and new roles grow out of other names and meetings. Thomas and Leif become
one, become three, become four..

But at the same time
there is poetry that functions in a concrete way in a social space. In
the course of earlier historical events the centre of the market and commerce
was symbolised by the town square, and power was symbolised by the church.
Today these determining ideas are a part of a global economic system,
abstract and incomprehensible to the individual. But they are still cruelly
present in our everyday affairs. They are there in the images of TV's
hallucinatory eye, in war, in blood and money as well as in white laundry,
in our food and in unemployment. Yet in the emotional world view by which
we mentally order our lives, we are in another and ancient reality where,
to quote Goethe, "the moon shines, rivers run, and poetry is written".
An eternal longing for a lost paradise that is exploited not only by the
laws of manufacturing - but paradoxically also by the bewildering domain
of art

In the beginning of
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx writes: "The history of all previous
societies is the history of the class struggle." Today, when Hieronymus
Bosch's Hay Wagon is staged as a touring Broadway play performed among
the ruins of central Europe, we realise the frightening importance of
our inner voices and the true significance of the expression, "to
stand with your cap in your hand"

Our letters, most
often to people who have "succeeded" in one way or another,
naturally gave rise to both personal and indignant replies. Once sent
out to the addressees, dreams immediately collided with the inexorable
sharpness of waking day. In this book we have, however, taken the liberty
to exclude all letters of reply so that we ourselves shall remain uncontradicted,
even though it is in the incongruous realm of sleep. Nor have we interested
ourselves in utilising the potential value of reply letters, just as we
have not clarified who is right or wrong - but merely to give our dreams
"full access" in the play of values that characterise human
activities

With insight into
the frighteningly unjust distribution of human opportunities that continues
to occur on earth, despite seeming hopelessness the potential also exists
to turn disadvantage into its opposite. We are all born like Jesus Christ.